


midnight radio

by myvoidedeyes



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Radio, Angst, Bad Parenting, Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Fallen Angels, Feels, Flower Imagery, Flowers, God is a bad father, Hell, Hurt/Comfort, Music, Piano, Unresolved Romantic Tension, just a little, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 09:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17322029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myvoidedeyes/pseuds/myvoidedeyes
Summary: for all of his existence, he'd never truly been alone, able to feel his siblings' minds, their thoughts and voices with a simple lapse in concentration. then it stopped.





	midnight radio

**Author's Note:**

> I recently got into Lucifer (aka binged it in like four days) and I wanted to write something for the fandom. This weird rambly thing was the product of 'Shout' by Malia J and Think Up Anger, so maybe give that a listen  
> (It's also the longest thing I've posted on here which is weird)

How could he have ever known what falling would entail? When one is the first, the original sinner, how are they to ever know what to expect? Degradation, agony, those were inevitabilities. The torrid felling of his physical form, the tearing burn through every molecule, perhaps even a skeletal shredding of his wings, that he could have predicted. He had once known his father—or thought he had—and retribution, wretched and pointed, that was His way.

What he hadn’t expected was the silence. The sudden void once filled by the constant chatter of his siblings, like every radio station being played at once, however easy enough to sort through, if he had the patience to find the right frequency. It had always been a mix of soothing and unbearable, that unending clash of voices. How many times had he burned with frustration, clawing for a _moment_ of quiet in the chaos? But then it was gone, and the sudden silence was far more deafening then the cacophony had ever been. And it refused to be filled.

Perhaps it was because even Hell was silent at first: just the mute rain of ash on the frozen stone, swallowing the dull echo of his footsteps. There was no screaming, no discordant sounds of torture, not even when the souls began to fill the empty cells. No matter how many times he stepped into those pocket dimensions of torment, the sounds never lingered, dissipating too fast, going softly into the unending twilight. It took a very long time—embarrassingly so—for it to occur to him that maybe his true punishment _wasn’t_ being chained to the endless corridors of cold grey, but that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in his prison to fill that void. Skewering His own son on a dual edged blade was so very _typical_ of his father. What not even God could have predicted, however, was what he would discover in his millennia in Hell: _music_.

Despite the execrable, loathsome renditions that haunted the minds of the damned and the tool belts of the wicked, music was the one thing that could hook itself into his mind, no matter for how diminutive a period, and occupy the emptiness. It was often horrible, shrill, skull-achingly _bad_ , but it was something. And, every so often, it would be beautiful, however twisted by the tormented’s mind it might be. When it was, he would find himself humming the melody under his breath, no matter how it would sink into the stones as the notes vibrated from his vocal cords. Hope—and something he’d never admit was peace—began to take root in the place where all of divinity had once hummed its thoughts into his mind, a kind of ivory flower speckled with black.

Of all the reasons he’d give for his brief jailbreak stints out of Hell—as well as the ones assumed of him—the truth never made an appearance, held tightly in the growing swell of flowers’ hollow pistils. Desire was something he understood innately, so he followed it, gorging himself of sex, alcohol, and drugs enough to second-handedly sully the wings of even his brotherly keeper. And _oh_ , how he revelled in it. But it was also the perfect façade. Desire followed him, spilling out around him as he chased the one thing he truly needed, more than any want. That first time he cracked the divine code, found himself splayed out under the sun, staring unblinkingly into its true light, he had charmed and bribed his way, silver tongued and _greedy_ , to the first instrument he could find. One after the other, he mastered them, stealing away pieces of music to bring back with him when Amenadiel crashed his party, dragging him back down. With each visit, he found something new to add to his patchwork stitch job.

But, in the end, it was the piano that finally eased the agonizing grip in his chest, immortal-fist tight. Its keys matched the fauna growth that had rooted over the silence, and its notes, in every pitch and key, on or off, were achingly similar to the radio mess that had once played in his head. So he learned it, inside and out, until he could play it like a human body, have its sounds bleed into one another _just_ right, like he could any man or woman, to create the perfect melody. Every emotion—those damned, insipid things—could be poured into notes, draining their hold out of him into the open air.

            He had never admitted to anyone; not even Mazikeen, who followed at his heels with her knife-sharp eyes and bloody, brutalized hands, a most unexpected suit of armour, right out of Hell and into the cold moonlight of Los Angeles’ beaches, willing to go so far as to take her blades, those Hell-forged things, and hack through the sinew, muscle, and bone holding him to the last of the Silver City. She would willingly give her life, her only chance at existence, for his, and yet he could not share with her his secret, locked into the careful callouses of his hands. He’d held his curse of silence—that horrible, biting fear—within for eons.

            And yet he told her.

            It hadn’t been intentional. But there were a great many things he’d been willing to do for the Detective that he would have never considered before. It might have just been the product of sharing the body-warmed bench, or the way her side had simply come to rest against his as he stroked the ivories, unconscious in the length of his practice. Chloe had seemed so…comfortable and at ease, just sharing that space with him, and he’d lapsed, his thoughts, ever-spiralling when it came to her, so unintentionally enigmatic, had stalled the music. Her voice, soft and concerned, breaking the silence was what triggered the realization that it had fallen in the first place. And, for the first time in millennia, he hadn’t noticed. Then she had asked—always concerned, no matter how angry she had been or how he failed to reciprocate—and the truth had just tumbled from his mouth like notes from the piano.

            But—and he only realized as he confessed to her that there even was a _but_ —silence, the way it _ate_ away at him, had stopped feeling like torture after he’d met the Detective. After he started following her, helping her help others, despite how selfish his motivations often were. There no longer was that empty ache were his siblings’ voices had once lived. Just a soft quiet, often broken by the confounding way he’d get odd new _feelings_ when he watched Chloe be… _good_ ; to others and…to him.

            It was an epiphany, sudden and inconvenient, that was not shared. No, he simply stirred his fingers on the keys and plucked out a simple song, and, for the first time in his existence, music took on a very different meaning.

**Author's Note:**

> So that's that. I know it isn't really shippy, but I hope you enjoyed and—wow I feel weird saying this—maybe drop a kudos if you did like it.


End file.
